


The Good Fight

by TheJoysOfAMultishipper (Amemah)



Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Brainwashing, Bucky Barnes & Steve Rogers Bromance, Gen, Hydra, Identity Porn, Swearing
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-05-31
Updated: 2015-05-31
Packaged: 2018-04-02 05:36:54
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,656
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4048201
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Amemah/pseuds/TheJoysOfAMultishipper
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Knowing who you are is confusing. Hydra doesn't fucking help.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Good Fight

**Author's Note:**

> If you're wondering where the fuck I've been, its in the hospital. Im getting released on Tuesday after 8 freaking weeks. Yay.
> 
> SO. This is kinda old, like a few months, maybe? It was an alternate beginning to a superlong Darcy and Bucky-centric fic I'm writing. If you remember that Darcy/Nick Fury fic i was talking about, with the slowburn? Yep. Mhm. I think that one might be it, but for now it's Gen. We'll see. Did any of that make sense? I fucking hope so. 
> 
> BTW: I can't deal with constructive criticism right now, nor corrections, so... Sorry bout that. We all have our days. weeks. whatever.
> 
> \--- I reserve the right to edit mistakes if/when I find them :)
> 
> Anyway, let me know if you like it?  
> Hugs and kisses <3
> 
> Tumblr: amemah.tumblr.com / thejoysofamultishipper.tumblr.com
> 
> Joysofamultishipper is my fandom blog (Well - theres more fandom) and my writing, so you should follow that if you like my writing. There is a lot of stuff published there that hasn't been published here, so. :)
> 
>  
> 
> \--- I'm really fucking tired so just ignore the mistakes here. There isn't this many in the actual fic, promise :)

He couldn’t help but be glad no one ever asked him why he enlisted. Truth be told, he wasn’t entirely sure himself. Or well, the entire story was too long for him to tell, too many words he couldn’t find – not yet, maybe not ever – and too many identities and personalities all bundled up in one man. It started with the Crystal Night, with the 91 lives no longer living and the hundreds who committed suicide in the aftermath, and his heart ached for the injustice of it all – but it was too far away. It wasn’t the same injustice he saw in that back alley at thirteen, where a skinny kid was sure he could hold his own by his damn _courage_ alone. But then. Pearl Harbor.

 

Then he couldn’t justify it any longer. His number was coming up anyway, and he’d always been the one to leave, not be left. Didn’t want to leave Steve, but not even training him in that damn boxing hall could get him on the roll, and here they were. Bucky in an uniform and Steve in a trenchcoat not even near being thick enough. It wasn’t any lack of patriotism on his part – there’s only so many times you can walk past those posters and only so many hours you can know Steven Grant Rogers, before _The Good Fight_ is looking pretty damn great – but James knew Steve should be the one in the uniform. Bucky didn’t care much for the feeling that told him he would be, eventually. Told that feeling to go fuck itself, preferably with a sharp cactus.

 

He moved through the ranks quickly, earning the trust of his superiors, but more importantly, his men. They treated him with respect and that good-natured humor you didn’t get anywhere else than here, in the trenches. The humor was laden with more hints of bittersweet-ness the longer they were out there, but they kept each other going, kept each other talking about the women at home, and when someone took a bullet for someone else, there were quiet whispers of men at home, too.  Bucky liked the friendships, James liked the trust and Sergeant Barnes liked the rifle in his hand and the heartbeat he could feel in his _hip_. Wondered if he was a man worthy of Steven Rogers’s seal of approval when he couldn’t help but smile as heads blew off and out, but decided that in the end – he didn’t have a choice. Bucky had seen the camps, James had seen the families and Sergeant Barnes had seen the means to an end. It had to be done. He read something about ‘virtue ethics’ once, and figured there was nothing wrong in seeking comfort in that. It was war – still _is_ war, it _never_ leaves you – and there wasn’t any chocolate left. Where else were you supposed to find comfort?

 

But then they got captured, and well. There’s more of Steve shining in Bucky than just patriotism, so he takes the proverbial bullet and gets the fucking needle. Too many memories of a sick Steve and wondering if this was _the_ winter every winter, and he wasn’t a big fan of them in the first place. This? This doesn’t exactly help. And there’s pain; pain that makes him forget and remember everything, pain that makes everything so unbelievably clear and so immensely fuzzy, pain that makes him scream and sob, pain that makes everything burn and everything freeze and then. Then there’s Steve. Steve who is taller than he has ever been, Steve who is healthier than anyone in these times has any right to be – but if there’s someone, it’s Steve – and Bucky wonders if virtue ethics is anything to bet his everything on. But Steve is here and Steve is taller and Bucky doesn’t burn anymore. He didn’t care much for the feeling that the cold was coming back, eventually. Told that feeling to go fuck itself, preferably with a sharp cactus – bonus points if it’s poisonous.

 

And they were off again, fighting bullies with smaller brains, bigger muscles and newer weapons. Steve was slinging out his heroic speeches like they were going out of style, while James whispered to a God he couldn’t _not_ believe in; asking how he was supposed to keep his brother safe. And in the end it didn’t matter, did it. Because he fell, Steve roared and there was fire and ice and screaming and sobbing and clarity and fuzziness and. Blank. Heaviness to his arm that wasn’t there before and all he could do was _stare_ as he realized that there wasn’t an identity for this. Bucky was charming and friendly, James was fair and protective, and Sergeant Barnes was convinced and effective. There wasn’t anyone who fit with the image of an arm that looked more like a weapon, because not even the Sergeant was as cold and calculating as that metal.

 

The Winter Soldier was though. The Winter Soldier turned a giggling, red-haired and beautiful dainty dancer into a Black Widow, turned her into a ruthless weapon of seduction and destruction, as famous in one circle as infamous in another. He beat her and healed her, broke her and put her back together, waiting for _that_ moment. Waiting for the moment she’d put _herself_ back together, so he could send her away, knowing that she would be safe on her own – because in the end, the little dancer giggling was no different than the little punk coughing. The Winter Soldier didn’t understand why he was setting her free, but a part of him, the part of him called Sergeant James Bucky Barnes smiled a broken smile and the Winter Soldier – well. Maybe there was a bit of a rebel in him, too – a little bit of the man James called _Steve_ , the man the Winter Soldier called _familiar stranger_. It was only fitting to have a conflicted name for a man he couldn’t remember remembering.

 

And the Winter Soldier continued existing in this vacuum of train, kill, pain, reset, freeze, over and over and over, until the part of him named Sergeant James Bucky Barnes wasn’t a part of him anymore. He was nothing more than a shadow, lurking in the back of the Asset’s mind, paid no more mind to than an old memory. But there were new memories to be made and wiped, most of them in the 60s. He remembered shooting a man with blonde hair as he waved to a crowd, his wife sitting next to him as she smiled politely. He remembered the feel of the rifle shaking in his arm as the wife’s pink skirt-suit was splattered, the scream she let out. He remembered feeling like this was _wrong_ , like he shouldn’t be doing this, this wasn’t right. But then his handler was there, with a needle – do not like do not like _do not like_ – and. Darkness. Again. Until he was running through a crowd and shooting at a speaker with only one letter in his last name, seeing other men joining in, feeling yet again like this was wrong, like this wasn’t what he signed up for – this wasn’t… This wasn’t… This wasn’t The Good Fight. 16 bullets wasn’t part of The Good Fight. _Steve wouldn’t have liked the 16 bullets_ , some part of his mind said, but the Asset couldn’t respond in the darkness. Can’t _be_ anything other than a shell in the darkness, not until he falls asleep. Not until he’s dreaming of a familiar stranger and seamed stockings on women who weren’t so far out of his league, after all.

 

He woke up again, to handlers with sharp smiles on their faces speaking of Vietnam, how the ‘American dogs have finally run home’, and this has always been the weakest state of his conditioning – they _knew_ that. Right after the ice was always when the Asset was the furthest back and no one knew if it was the Sergeant or Bucky who stared back.

 

“And when am I going home, Master?”

They break the bones in his arm one by one, and as the Asset fought his way back to them, Sergeant wondered when one if his arms stopped being _his_. And as he watched the news in a motel room God only knew where, he knew it was when that arm became responsible for 299 deaths.

 

The longest darkness yet came afterwards. Truth be told, there was some part of him that said he deserved it. Another part welcomed it. It didn’t matter what the rest of him thought, because he was already asleep. In a coma. Frozen. You decide.

 

“This is your mission, Soldier.”

Dontwantdontwant _dontwantit_. “Sir.”

“Get on with it, you fucking animal!”

“Sir.”

“Never should have let you fucking live, you get that? You’re _fucking_ luck to be alive, so better fucking do as I say. You hear me?”

I’m not alive. “Sir.” Not really.

 

“The man on the bridge. I knew him.”

“Wipe him.”

 

And weapons were assembled, teams were briefed, arms were checked and blood drawn.

“For the cause, Soldier,”

“Sir.”

“Be our weapon,”

“Sir.”

“Make us proud!”

"Sir."

“For the Good Fight, Soldier.”

“No.”

 

His eyes flitted back and forth, jumping from one spot on the floor to another. He didn’t even know he knew that word.

“What?” His Commander asked with narrowed eyes. A vein in her forehead throbbed dangerously. “What the actual fuck did you just say?”

“This isn’t the Good Fight.” Sergeant Barnes looked up. “ _Steve_ fights the good fight.”

 

Bloodshed was the only thing left after him, a smoking building who would soon be so burned you wouldn’t be able to see the millions of bullets edged in its walls.

 

The Winter Soldier wondered if this was how the Dancer felt when she escaped.

Sergeant Barnes wondered if Steve could forgive him.

James really wanted a haircut.

 

Bucky didn’t exist any longer.

 

 

 

 


End file.
